Chapter 10 - Applause ── There’s rotten girls among us

The small glimmer inside the crystal ball was almost like the flickering light of a dying candle. For a moment, the entire training ground sank into a small period of pin drop silence. Which eventually turned into a huge uproar soon afterwards. Among the noisy crowd, only Alfie was able to casually brush it aside while shrugging his shoulders, as he was aware of the actual ‘circumstances’.

‘Oi oi oi, you must be joking with me, right? Didn’t he beat young lady Hyria earlier? Then it would only make sense if he at least had ten times more mana than an average person. It’s simply ridiculous that he only has that little mana.’

‘I can’t believe it.’ Zest let out an almost inaudible mutter. But oddly enough, I was still able to hear it clearly.

Suddenly, a particularly loud ‘laughter’ rang out among the noisy students. It was the ‘bright brown¹ crystal ball’ Student B. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t remember his name clearly.

Bright brown Student B stepped out of the crowd of students and made his way towards us.

“I knew it. I always thought it was strange that a commoner with an ‘incompetent attribute’ topped the entrance exam. Let alone myself, even Kadina couldn’t get the perfect score.”

An incompetent attribute– it was a derogatory term used for unattributed types of magic.

Unattributed magic was considered useless in battle due to its heavy amount of mana usage and complexity. Hence, it was generally treated as an insult.

Starting with Student B’s protest, the other students also began to openly show their suspicions and contempt towards me. I had guessed that they didn’t have a good impression of me thanks to the provocations I made at the entrance ceremony. But due to the whole aura of being the ‘top scorer’, they were rather reluctant to reveal their inner discontentment back then.

— Now then, how should I get around this situation?

Well, it’s pretty simple.

The reason why I enrolled in the Genius School of Magic was exactly to break this kind of prejudice.

“Hey you commoner, it’s still not too late. Pack up your stuff and scram–”

Pssssssssssh!

Cutting off Student B’s monologue, an intense silver glow started radiating from the crystal ball. Even though it didn’t manage to surpass Alfie’s miniature sun, it still measured up to the closest amount of that radiance so far.

“–Wha, wha, what….?!”

Student B who was approaching me earlier suddenly stopped in his tracks while muttering some incomprehensible words. Before long, the silver light dimmed down and returned back to the small flicker of candle light on the verge of being extinguished.

The crystal ball was still lying on my hand.

Noticing that, Zest widened his eyes in surprise.

“Changing your innate mana capacity? Impossible!?”

If this crystal ball was of the same quality as the one in Obaa-san’s place, then this crystal should ‘accurately’ gauge the amount of mana contained inside the person that’s holding it, even if magic was being used to disguise the result of that measurement.

But since the standard of strength was measured by the intensity of light it produced, the term ‘accurate’ wasn’t entirely accurate in itself. Even so, it was almost impossible to adjust the intensity of light intentionally.

However, it was possible to alter it a little after consuming a large quantity of internal mana, so that it would emit a smaller radiance than it originally should. But doing the opposite, and to do it at such a visible rate was considered close to impossible.

As far as I knew, there was no one who could do this except for the Great Sage of the dark forest and of course, myself. That old woman should be able to control the amount of light inside the crystal ball to some extent like I did, although it would be to a different degree. Then again, her internal mana mass wasn’t all that amazing to begin with, so she probably wouldn’t be able to make a huge change like I did…

Beep-beep-beep!

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!

*Three-three-seven beats!* ²

Oops, Alfie scolded me for playing with the flickering crystal ball. Buddy, you never miss a chance to make a jab at me, do you? What a life saver you are.

“You… you’ve got to be kidding me! You phony bastard!”

I turned around at the sudden yelp coming from behind me and saw Student B, whom I had completely forgotten about for a good minute, reaching for my chest.

I safely dodged it.

“Wha! Stop running away, you commoner!”

“I don’t really enjoy other men grabbing me by the collar though.”

“Huh, Huuh!?”

“Ah, maybe you have a thing for grabbing men by the collar? Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t return your feelings. Cause I only like girls, you know!”

“Wha, wait you–”

“But even if you do have a habit of grabbing men by the collar or pants, I won’t discriminate against you. I mean I don’t even want to be associated with you in the first place.”

“This bastard, shut your–”

“Then again, being a noble is serious business, isn’t it? Ah maybe all the other noblemen also have a fetish to grab men by the collar like you? Or maybe, you’re the type that gets all hot and bothered when you get finally caught?”

Filled with so many doubts, I turned to my classmates for answers, to which all the male students frantically shook their heads in response.

–Let’s just pretend not to notice those few female students who slumped their shoulders in utter disappointment.

(T/N: Cue to the title)

“That’s too bad, looks like none of them are interested. But don’t worry, even if you don’t have the same sexual interests, you can still make friends.”

I patted Student B’s shoulder to console him. I also gave him a thumbs up with my other hand with a refreshing smile as encouragement.

“———————–Argh!”

Student B struck me with a speechless scream. His face which was tinged in red, had changed into a shade of black. It was so strange. I was simply advising him out of the kindness of my heart after all.

Oh, I dodged it again.

And thus, his air punches continued until Zest had come up to stop him.

Of course, I casually evaded all of them.